MY MESSAGE FOR PEOPLE AGAINST IN DEATH PENALTY

in reality, people are not rational all the time. we should accept our limitation. be considerate as long as we can but if someone killed, ate, and raped our loved ones. i dont think we can be rational. you can say that is ok the killer stay in the prison while he is alive. if that happened to other people and not in your loved ones. logically, we can be rational to the situation if we are not involved but if we are. i doubt it, if you can be rational. if you can. you are too rational and logical person all the time. in reality, there is no person that fully logical that's why i agree in death penalty. im thinking the people who cant sleep and live normal because someone killed, ate, and raped their loved ones. i know killing a criminal cannnot make their loved ones alive but even you admit it or not. a victim's family get feel better a bit after the person died that's why i realized let the heinous criminals work in prison but killed them when they are already old and weak for the family that they hurt.

The death penalty is not a deterrent to murder or other capital offences. Countries without the death penalty have lower violent crime rates than countries with the death penalty. This also happens in the US when states are compared.

What the convict wants or doesn't want shouldn't figure in. He forfeited his rights when the determination was made that he committed the crime in question. Sorry, but he doesn't get a vote. And if that determination was in error and he did NOT commit the crime, do you still want to go through with an execution?!?

I should mention that this includes those who want to indulge in SBC - Suicide By Cop - especially considering the deranged emotional / mental state which many such people may be subject to.

Luara, like it or not, when a man or woman is convicted of a crime, The First Thing They Lose Are THEIR RIGHTS. They become "wards of the state," which means that whatever rights they once had now devolve to the state or federal authority. Their actions, their crime, is what disempowered them. It is part of the penalty for violating the law.

It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to give someone room and board in a prison for decades. Not to mention the money spent on appeals for them.

Spending this money on someone who wants to die, is a VERY expensive way of satisfying a notion of punishing a person by taking rights away. If you want to console the victims, there are many more cost-effective ways of doing this.

No, prisoners do not lose any and all rights. Prisoners have many rights.

Probably anyone should have that right to end their life - with safeguards such as a waiting period etc. If so, allowing a conscious creature to end it all if they want to, seems like an inalienable right - something convicts do not lose, just as they do not lose their right to not be attacked by guards or other prisoners.

It's not as if "the only way out of here is death" is a wonderful choice!

Convicted prisoners may have SOME rights, but those rights are highly restricted, and mostly exercised through their lawyers: appeal processes and other actions. Those processes are exceptionally expensive, occupying lawyers, judges and other personnel whose work costs sometimes start at hundreds of dollars an hour and go UP. Appeals have been known to go on for years, a decade or longer, the cost of most of which get absorbed by the state, and that can be a considerable sum, even when compared against the cost of indefinite incarceration. Where the crossover is cost-wise, I don't know, but it is near common knowledge that the costs associated with the pursuit of death-penalty appeals in the short term vastly outstrip those of incarceration.

Here I have to note the case of Ariel Castro, who committed suicide while in the care of the state of Ohio. No, he did NOT have the right to do so. As I stated before, his right to the control of his own life - Including Whether He Continued to Live or Not - was forfeit once he was convicted of multiple kidnappings, rapes and other heinous crimes. It was the job of the state to maintain their prisoner, particularly one on suicide watch, and it was the failure of the state's representatives to monitor him that allowed his action, which will have their own consequences attached for those people involved.

If Pat were available, I'm sure he would bring a closer and more experienced understanding to this business. As it is, all I can do is give my take as an observer of the process with what knowledge of the law I have.

My point remains this: however you may want the business of rights of the convicted to conform to your model, they currently DON'T ... nor would I expect them to change in the foreseeable future.

Loren,if ever a person deserved to be locked up for life it was Castro. The death penalty would have been to easy a way out. He stood before the judge and blamed the victims. That he got away with killing himself was a damned shame.

The cost of housing a maximum-security inmate is roughly $50,000 per year. The average cost to house an inmate is more like $30,000, but a murderer would be in a higher-security prison.

If Fidel lived in prison for 30 years, he would cost the state $1.5 million. Not including any court costs that are borne by the state.

I can think of MUCH better uses for that $1.5 million, than causing Castro mental anguish. Like improving nutrition and schooling of poor people.

Also, I don't see that society has the right to cause prisoners mental anguish by denying them the right to die. Society has a right to take away from the convict the freedom that made it possible for them to murder someone. but beyond that? Most of us would say that society doesn't have the right to deliberately cause prisoners physical anguish, so what justifies causing mental anguish?